A new chapter

Sunday

After four years of connecting the dots, the future is finally here for 21-year-old Ashley Jennings, one of 370 graduates at Wheaton College’s 172nd commencement ceremony on Saturday.

After four years of connecting the dots, the future is finally here for 21-year-old Ashley Jennings, one of 370 graduates at Wheaton College’s 172nd commencement ceremony on Saturday.“It is very surreal,” said Jennings, of Chicago, Illinois. “I can’t believe it.”A great feeling of accomplishment washed over Jennings as she accepted her diploma and looked toward the future. However, Jennings noted this future would not be possible without the people she has met along the way.“I have been here for four years, it feels weird to know that I won’t be coming back here and weird that I won’t be seeing my friends and professors on a regular basis anymore,” said Jennings, a biology major.While Jennings admitted it will be sad turning her back on the life she knew at Wheaton, it is also exciting at the same time.“There is a great amount of uncertainty you feel as you graduate, but I’m prepared and know where I am going,” said Jennings, who will be applying for a doctorate in marine biology. “My degree will help get me there.”As friends and classmates of the graduating class of 2007 part ways and embark on their own personal journeys, Jennings leaves them with a few words to live by.“Keep going,” Jennings said. “Your goals may seem far away, but you will get there and when you do, it will be worth it.”No one knows this better than 21-year-old Susan Giovanoni, of East Taunton, who breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped off the graduation stage ready to take on the rest of her life.“I am a little nervous, but mostly excited,” said Giovanoni, an English major who will be moving to San Francisco to study at the American Conservatory Theatre. “I try not to worry too much about the future. It will all work itself out in the end.”The keynote speaker at Wheaton College’s commencement was pioneering educator Freeman Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a leading advocate for increasing the number of high-achieving minorities in science and engineering.A child-leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Hrabowski grew up in Birmingham, went to jail with Martin Luther King, and was featured in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary “Four Little Girls,” based on the racially motivated bombing in 1963 of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.Hrabowski’s speech encouraged graduates to think about how they have been transformed by their education at Wheaton and it urged them to realize their potential as leaders.“You must continue to learn and grow and ask the hard questions and sometimes take a stance that is not popular because it is the right thing to do,” Hrabowski said. “This is what it means to be liberally educated. To pursue, to explore, to express, to question and to continue to learn.”In addition to taking home a diploma, Wheaton students and graduates won 21 prestigious national scholarship awards this academic year, including a total of nine Fulbrights.Commencement was a bittersweet moment for 27-year-old Anna Eng, former synchronized swim coach at Wheaton College for the past four years, who watched three of her swimmers graduate.Just four short years ago, when her swimmers were freshmen, Eng was also a newbie at Wheaton College and had just taken a job as coach.“These girls were here all four years I was here, so it was kind of like we were all going through this together,” said Eng, who developed a sense of camaraderie with her swimmers.Now that they are closing the college chapter of their lives and moving on to bigger things, Eng said she has enjoyed watching her team grow as students, athletes and individuals.“It is amazing to see how fast four years can go by and to see how much they have changed as people in that short amount of time,” Eng said. “I’m so proud.”

alopes@tauntongazette.com

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